I was not going to write anything today, but seeing as I won't be playing over the next few days I'll give a brief run-down of last night.
I did decide to re-load at Interpoker and sort this ring thing out, but only play LHE and not go near NL, seeing I have never played LHE it should be interesting.
It was a bit of a slog at first as no-one was playing $.50/$1.00 full table at all, only short-handed. So I just joined the waiting list to let me know when there was at least 6 others playing. I loaded up 2 x $0.25/$0.50 tables now the main point is that I am trying to clear the bonus, the issue at this level is that you need a minimum of $5.00 pot for a rake and this only gets you 1/4 of a hand and when you need 450 raked hands....well you can see that this is an issue. After about an hour of play I am up about $7 total which is good. On NL I would have busted my buy-in already! I had accumulated in an hour a grand total of 2.75 raked hands toward my bonus...now that is grinding.
So this limit is not really getting me anywhere and still no action on the $.50/$1.00 tables. So do I get brave and go to 1/2 limit. I give it a shot and open up another table. (I still have no idea why the .25/.50 and 1/2 tables were packed and not a soul on .50/1). I sat in for about 20 hands before seeing a flop with AQs and missed, pre-flop was raised to $2 and the betting was up there post so I got out and was down about $6. The other tables were doing well, basically offsetting any loss at the higher limit. Things went along like this for about another 30 minutes any gain on the lower limits eaten by blinds at the higher limit but I was sitting in the raked hands and had about 24 raked on the 1/2 compared to 3.5 on the two lower combined.
The 0.50/1 table finally game alive and I shut down the 1/2 table. I played pretty well and was up on all three tables and started to shut down as the clock approached the
A few casual observations on LHE v NL and telling you how to suck eggs no doubt also.
- The swings are no where near as great, $$$ wise and emotionally / mentally. NL - Someone bets $15 and are all-in into you and you have a 17% chance and miss = fuck it! LHE - Someone bets $1 into you and you have a 17% chance and miss = at least this is not NL.
- You can buy a cheap look at the next card. The flop is out there and you are head-2-head first to speak, you are looking for a straight / flush draw or to get trips. You check, they bet $.50 and you call and get your look at the turn, if you hit you are set if you miss check / fold. This can be much more expensive NL.
- I find that you (well I do) pay more attention to what is going on especially with the community cards as it seems harder to get a read off the betting patterns of people so you pay more attention to reading the game.
- It is not anywhere near as boring as I have been lead to believe.
I also played a $3.30 tourney last night on Stars busting with the bubble approaching in 117th of 527 (99 paid). A massive 4-way all-in, my KK was cracked by AA, the two others had AT and KQ. Didn't mind so much I was 2nd to call against the KQ who was short stacked and the AA (who was top 10) called my all-in, and the final player also short-stacked decided to make it interesting.
At least it is Thursday, phew such a long week. Not much action over the next few days though as out tonight playing in the Australian Poker League, then the in-laws in town for Friday and Saturday and finally a close friend is visiting from London on Sunday which could get messy on a school night. I may get 3-4 hours in Sunday morning to dent that bonus again and my last two SnG have been 6ths so will need to do something about that.
Cheers...
and will be needing some LHE books to read it would seem...seems to be the way for me to go...
